


at the beginning with you

by WhiteJackal



Series: gilmores & comp. [1]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Series, Rule 63, baby rory, genderbent gilmore girls, in which lorelai is a teen!dad, rule 63 gilmore girls, teen dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 13:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10164365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteJackal/pseuds/WhiteJackal
Summary: lorel victor gilmore has a lot of decisions to make.OR, the year that changed his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> how the boy becomes a man with the girl who becomes his world.

**07 OCTOBER 1984—7:52PM**

“We could name it after you.”

"But I'm already named after my _grandmother_... What if it’s a girl?”

“Then we could name it after me, I guess…” Christine shrugged, running her hand over her stomach again. “Or my mother, or your mother—”

Lorel’s eyes flashed up to meet Christine’s. “That’s funny. You’re hilarious.”

A hint of a smile flickered over Christine’s lips. “What’s so wrong with naming our kid after one of our parents?”

Lorel lifted his eyebrows. “Exactly what you just said. _That’s_ what’s wrong.” He shook his head, looking back down at the history book in his lap. “I can’t believe you want to inflict another _Emily Gilmore_ on this poor world.”

Christine didn’t laugh, and when he looked up at her again she was staring off at nothing. Her hand rubbed over her huge stomach absently. They were supposed to be studying for their American History final, but Christine wasn’t paying attention—which would’ve been fine with Lorel if she wasn’t just lost in herself, that deer-in-the-headlights look hooding her brown eyes. Lorel frowned and bit his bottom lip, shutting his book.

“Hey, did you, uh… hear about Franny and Donald?”

Christine blinked a couple times before she really looked at Lorel. “What?”

“Franny and Donald,” Lorel repeated. “Did you hear about them?”

“What about them?”

“Donald’s been hanging around with Franny’s sister a lot. Apparently, Franny’s kind of okay with it because Franny wants to hang out with Donald’s _brother_.”

Christine’s eyes widened a bit. “His _brother_? The Harvard guy?”

“No.” Lorel shook his head and grinned. “That’s the best part. She wants to hook up with the _oldest_ one, the poetry dude up at NYU.”

“Isn’t he, like, _thirty_?”

“Franny likes ‘em well-aged.”

"Like a fine scotch." 

"Like a fine scotch with an awful goatee."

They laughed for a minute. Lorel felt that familiar connection—that nine-months-gone connection—flare up between him and Christine. Every now and then he’d see that girl who’d planned on running away with him, that wild kid who’d snuck vodka and cigarettes out onto his balcony when he was ‘sick.’ But then, just like _now_ , she’d float away behind this new Christine’s scared eyes.

“Chris, we’ve got to talk about this,” he said quietly.

“Franny and the poet?”

“No, though we can table that discussion and come back to it. There’s a soap concept in there somewhere, and you know how much I want to pursue a career in daytime television.” Christine smirked, but she got serious again when she saw Lorel’s face. He drew a deep breath and took Christine’s hands. “Chris… We’ve got to talk about us.”

Christine swallowed thickly and nodded. “Okay…”

“We… You and I need to fix… whatever’s going on with us.”

Christine frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Look… it’s a little late to think about _fixing_ the big thing going on.” He nodded pointedly at Christine’s stomach, trying to joke but failing miserably. The squirming sickness in his own stomach barely let him smile. “But… we’ve got to talk about what’s going to happen after this _big thing_ is done.”

“Lor, we talked about this already.” Christine pulled her hands from Lorel’s, wrapping her arms uncomfortably across her chest.

“No, _we_ didn’t. The Gilmores and the Haydens talked about this already, but _we’ve_ barely said two words about it in nine months, and we’re coming up on the eleventh hour, Baby.”

“I don’t understand what’s so wrong with Richard’s plan…”

Lorel let out a humorless bark of laughter, rolling his eyes and swinging his long legs off the bed. He ran a hand through his black curls and started pacing around his bedroom. He heard his dad’s voice downstairs, and he wondered if Richard and Emily could hear him and Christine as easily as he could hear them. It wasn’t like he could do anything to fix the problem though. He’d woken up to no bedroom door the morning after he and Christine broke the news—you know, so as to prevent him from knocking up his girlfriend even _more_ , because that was _so_ possible—and he hadn’t seen it since.

“When you lose our respect, you lose your privacy,” Richard had told him when he’d asked for the door back. Lorel even tried scaring his mother into giving him back his door by threatening to strip in the doorway whenever he heard Emily showing guests the house, but Richard wasn’t fazed. “You’ve already humiliated us in public, Lorel.” He hadn’t even looked up from his book, no surprises there. “I expected you to do the same in the privacy of our own home soon enough.”

_Screw them_ , Lorel decided, throwing caution and any semblance of thoughtfulness to the wind. _They’ve already heard all this, anyway._

“You just _said_ what’s wrong, Christine! It’s ‘Richard’s plan’. Not your plan, not my plan, not even our plan. Oh, _no_ , it’s ‘Richard’s plan.’”

“So what?” Christine’s expression was desperate, and she looked like she might cry. She’d been crying a lot the last few weeks, but Lorel felt guilty every time he made her do it. She was carrying his _child_ , for God’s sake. But his guilt didn’t lessen his anger much at all.

“ _So what_?” he echoed, shaking his head. “Christine, that’s _our_ baby!” He pointed at her stomach, running a hand through his hair again. “ _Ours_ —not Emily and Richard’s, not Straub and Francine’s. _Ours_. We need to be making our own plans!”

“Lor, we’re s-sixteen!” A couple tears spilled from Christine’s dark eyes, running down her flushed cheeks, and her voice trembled. “What do _we_ know about b-babies?”

“We’ll figure it out, Chris!”

“How?!”

“We just… _will_!”

“We c-can’t do that, L-Lorel!”

“Yes, we can!”

“How do you k-know that?!”

“Because we _have to_ , Christine!”

Lorel’s breaths were short. His throat burned, and his eyes were a little blurry. He took a deep breath, forcing his heart to slow down and ordering himself not to cry. Christine was doing that enough for the both of them. He had to be strong—stronger than her, stronger than all of this. What other choice did he have?

Slowly, Lorel returned to his bed, sitting down in front of Christine atop the mattress again. He could hear Emily scolding him for his volume, could hear Richard shutting his study door. His mother would probably come upstairs to make sure he obeyed her orders if he didn’t answer her, but Lorel didn’t care. He just cared about Christine and that kid growing inside her:  _his_ kid.

“I’m scared, too, you know.” His hands shook when he pulled Christine closer to him. He swallowed down the scalding lump in his throat again, and he tried to smile for Christine. “But… But we _can_ do this. We can do this together, Chris. I know we can.” Christine drew in a shuddering breath, and Lorel pressed his forehead against hers, resting both their hands atop her stomach.

_We’ll figure this out_ , he promised himself. _We’ll figure out how to make a life for the three of us, and we’ll do it on our own._

The kid kicked hard against Lorel’s hand.

 

**08 OCTOBER 1984—3:41AM**

“God, Lor, this _hurts_!” Christine squeezed Lorel’s hand tightly. He nearly had to jog to keep up with the hospital bed as the doctors and nurses wheeled Christine back into the delivery room, but he didn’t fall a single step behind. “You have no idea how much this hurts!”

“I know, Chris, but I bet they can give you something for the pain.” He grabbed the coat of the doctor in front of him, yanking the guy around to face him. “Right? You can give her something for the pain? They said you could in the baby books.”

“Settle down, young man,” the doctor said. "You can't get everything you want right when you want it _here_." He brushed Lorel off condescendingly, just as most of the hospital staff had tried doing since he and Christine got there a couple hours earlier. But just like the other dozen times it had happened, Lorel wasn’t having their crap.

“That’s funny.” He laughed and put his hand on the doctor’s shoulder, holding on tightly. _Shake me off this time, Dr. Doolittle. I dare you._ “Bet you say that to all the guys. Bet you’re really good at calming down hysterical fathers. Only I’m not hysterical—not _yet_. You don’t want to see _me_ ‘hysterical,’ ask my parents. You think I’m difficult to deal with right now? You just wait. I can get a _hell_ of a lot worse. As a matter of fact—”

“ _Yes_!” The doctor yanked his mask from his mouth, eyes wide with irritation. “My _God_ , yes. We’ll give her more pain medication when we get into the delivery room.”

Lorel smiled charmingly, patting the doctor’s shoulder like they were old friends. “Thanks so much, Chaz.”

The doctor rolled his eyes and shook his head, focusing on Christine’s hospital bed and the chart in his free hand. Lorel turned back to Christine, smoothing her sweaty hair from her clammy forehead. She was breathing hard and fast—Lorel was, too, now that he thought about it. That adrenaline from dealing with the doctor faded, leaving him just as anxious and wild-eyed as he was when Christine called him to say she was in labor. Apparently, according to Chris, their kid hadn’t stopped kicking after she left the Gilmores’ house. She thought the baby was just being active, but then her water broke—which was when she called Lorel. He’d been watching a _Carol Burnett_ rerun, drifting in and out of sleep and gorging himself on ice cream and chips and candy while Emily and Richard were at a D.A.R. function, when the phone rang. He jumped into the car that was _supposed_ to be his sixteenth birthday present, damning the fact he didn’t have a driver’s license yet, and picked up Christine at her house. Her parents were at the D.A.R. event, too, so they were alone for the couple of hours they’d been at the hospital.

“It won’t be long once we’re inside the delivery room,” the nurse on Christine’s right told them. “Your baby’s a fighter, but it looks like things’ll go pretty smooth once—”

“ _Lorel Victor Gilmore_!”

“Mom?”

“Emily?” Christine craned her neck to see before she gripped Lorel’s hand even tighter, squeezing her eyes shut as another contraction seized her. He tried not to groan in painful protest, though he could feel his skin bruising. Emily’s grip whipped him around when she grabbed onto his elbow. Lorel almost lost his footing, Christine’s hand the only thing keeping him from falling behind the moving bed.

“Of course, it’s me!” Emily’s eyes blazed, and she waved a piece of paper in Lorel’s face. She still didn’t let go of his arm, and she kept up with the quickly-moving hospital bed like a champion. “Are you surprised? What did you think would happen when I read this note you were so _good_ to leave us?!”

Lorel winced and drew in a calming breath. _Dammit, I forgot I left them a note._

“‘Dear Mom,’” Emily read off loudly, “‘Christine in labor. Going to hospital. Taking car.’” Richard stumbled up behind Lorel—the first time he’d noticed his father—mumbling something about his suit or his shoes not actually being _his_ suit or shoes. “You don’t even have a _license_ , Lorel! What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Lorel snapped, barely giving his parents a glance. _God_ , this was not the time. He had to focus on Christine, on having their baby, on getting through this night alive and _sane_. Leave it to the Gilmores to add extra difficulty to one of the most universally acknowledged challenges in human existence. “Let me write you another note detailing my decision-making process. I’ve got so much _time_ right now, you know!”

“These shoes are definitely too small,” Richard mumbled, trying to squeeze through the cramped and crowded double-doors.

“Shut _up_ , Richard!” Emily tried to pull Lorel to a stop again, slowing down the cluster of medical personnel when she caused one of the nurses to trip.

“We have to proceed into the delivery room _now_ ,” the doctor said, leaving no room for argument—not even for Emily Gilmore—when he moved the bed along even faster. Christine cried out louder this time, and Lorel yanked his arm from his mother’s hand to hold onto Christine even tighter. The Gilmores fell behind as Christine and Lorel were pulled along by the doctors and nurses farther along into the labyrinth of the hospital.

“Don’t think we won’t discuss this later,” Emily shouted after them.

“Looking forward to it,” Lorel shouted back.

 

**08 OCTOBER 1984—10:36AM**

“She’s beautiful…”

“She’s _perfect_ ,” Lorel corrected. He’d only held his daughter once—hospital procedure, they'd said, keeping the baby away from the parents for a few hours—but he’d not left the nursery window. He’d been staring at Lorelai Leigh Gilmore all morning, ever since she came kicking and screaming into the world at 4:03AM.

“We’ll have to come up with something else to call her besides Lorelai,” he muttered. He saw Christine nod in the reflection of the nursery glass, but she was distracted, too. They were both completely wrapped up in their daughter as she slept in her tiny crib. “It’s too similar. When we’re shouting around the house it’ll get confusing who’s getting called… Besides, it’s cruel to call  _another_ kid by that name. Even _I_ only got a variation.”

“I was too drugged to notice what I told them,” said Christine.

“I was too crazy to notice what you told them,” said Lorel. “I didn’t even know her name until the nurse wrote it on her crib label.”

They were quiet for a minute. The hospital was oddly calm around them. Emily and Richard were with Francine and Straub in the lobby—several hallways away from Lorel, his girlfriend, and his partial namesake.

“Do you like it though?” Christine’s voice was quiet. She’d slept more than Lorel, but exhaustion was written all over her face and woven all through her voice. “Her name? I mean, we can change it if you don’t…”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “No, I like it.”

Christine nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Maybe we could call her… ‘Lori’ or something? Though… that’s really close to your nickname, so maybe not.”

“How about ‘Rory?’” Lorel tried out the name in his head, seeing if the kid in front of him looked like a ‘Rory’ or not. “It kinda sounds like it could be part of ‘Lorelai,’ and it’s not too lame.”

“ _Rory_ …” Christine whispered it a couple more times. Lorel thought he saw her brush a couple tears away before she nodded. “Yeah, I think I like ‘Rory.’”

Lorel smiled the tiniest bit before all the magnitude of _Rory_ actually hit him again. It was a nice moment with him and Christine—they’d had a couple in the delivery room and in the hours since. But this wasn’t something that would work as a series of nice moments. This was their life now—this _had_ to be their life. _Rory_ was their life. Lorel couldn’t put anything else at the center of his world anymore, he realized, choking a little on a lump in his throat when Rory yawned in her crib. It was the single most wonderful thing he’d ever seen.

“So…” Christine put her hands on the windowsill of the nursery, tapping her fingers against it nervously. “I guess we should get married.”

 

**10 OCTOBER 1984—11:28AM**

“What the _hell_ were you thinking?!”

Lorel slid the diaper bag’s strap further up onto his shoulder, bouncing Rory’s carrier a little when the kid started stirring. Lorel barely kept his eyes open as he groggily walked across the foyer. The front door slammed shut, and the maid gasped when Richard threw his overcoat at her. He stormed in front of Lorel, blocking his path to the stairs. Richard was furious, but Lorel couldn’t think of anything else but how much he just wanted to _sleep_.

“Richard,” Emily began, trying to calm her husband, “let’s just—”

“Headstrong, _stupid_ boy!” Lorel felt infinitely smaller than his father, even though he’d been getting closer to Richard’s height in the last year. “You’d rather do everything wrong than do _one thing_ right if it’s what I suggested!”

Lorel swallowed thickly. “That’s not true, Dad—”

“You’re _carrying_ the evidence to the contrary, Lorel!” Richard’s roar made Lorel flinch, even as tired as he was, and Rory start crying.

“That’s enough,” Emily said. She put a hand on Lorel’s arm for just a moment, and he thought she was comforting him—but just for a moment. She slipped Rory’s carrier from Lorel’s hand, carrying the fussing infant upstairs. Lorel watched her go achingly, and he told himself it was just because she was taking Rory away.

Richard paced away from Lorel, pouring himself some scotch at the drink cart. He took a drink of it before turning back to Lorel. All that shame in his eyes, all that disappointment…

_I’m never going to get used to that._

“Throughout these past nine months, Lorel, I told myself you would come to your senses—that you would do the right thing.” Richard blocked off the stairs again.  _I should have made a break for it when I could_ , Lorel chided himself. “I thought there was enough _Gilmore_ in you to foster some semblance of respectability and responsibility—”

“What do you think I’m _doing_ , Dad?” Lorel’s voice cracked, and his eyes and throat burned painfully. “I’m taking _responsibility_ for Rory! I’m taking care of my daughter—”

“That baby is not your only responsibility, Lorel! What about Christine?”

“I’m doing this for Christine, too!”

She only wanted to marry him because she was scared, and because Lorel refused to consider adoption. But when Lorel said he’d take the baby, that he’d raise their daughter on his own, there was nothing else to hold her. Lorel loved Christine, and he knew she loved him—at least in the way they understood love at sixteen—but they were nowhere _near_ ready for marriage. If she’d really, _truly_ wanted Lorel she would have fought harder for him and Rory. But she hadn’t. She’d let him take Rory from the hospital, and she’d let him end things between them. It hurt like hell, but Lorel knew it was for the best; it hurt worse to know his dad when never see it that way, that he'd never see Lorel as anything more than selfish and stupid and immature. 

“Well, what about your mother and me then?”

Lorel laughed bitterly, shaking his head and wiping his eyes roughly as he edged around Richard. “There it is. There’s what you’re _really_ upset about, Dad. Well, don’t worry. You can hide me and Rory upstairs like you’ve been doing for the last nine months. No one needs to see your disgraced son or _illegitimate granddaughter_ —” 

Richard grabbed Lorel’s arm, jerking him back to face him harder and faster than he’d done in a long time. “How _dare_ you suggest—”

Lorel matched his father’s rage. “I’m not ‘suggesting’ anything! I’m repeating what you just _said_ , Dad, and if you don’t like it maybe you shouldn’t have—”

“I never said I wanted to exile you, Lorel!” Richard’s voice was still furious, but Lorel noticed the same choking in his tone in his father’s voice now, and Richard’s Gilmore-blues were just as teary as his son’s. “That’s _never_ … None of this is what I…”

Richard just stood there for a little while. He looked lost, Lorel thought. He looked… _defeated_. And Lorel felt the full weight of what he had done to his father. He had destroyed everything Richard wanted and dreamed and hoped for him. Lorel was supposed to graduate at the top of his class and go to Yale and marry Christine and get a fancy job and house and car. _Then_ he was supposed to have kids.

Clearing his throat, Richard finally let go of Lorel’s arm. It tingled and stung and ached, but it still felt better than any other part of him. “Go upstairs, Lorel.” The detached tone, the cold gaze and distant bearing, returned. Richard straightened his jacket and tie. “Your mother wants you to meet the nanny she’s obtained for Rory.” He walked to his study before Lorel had a chance to answer, draining his scotch as he went.

Only when his father was truly gone, study door shut firm and locked tight, did Lorel allow himself to let out the shaky half-sob he’d been holding in. He sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, head in his shaking hands and broken heart in his aching chest, surrounded by nothing but the smothering, painful silence of his parents’ home.

 

**10 OCTOBER 1985—2:46PM**

Rory was still sleeping. She’d conked out about ten minutes outside of Hartford. Lorel was glad. He loved his kid—more than anything or anyone, actually—but he needed to think. And he couldn’t do that if he was trying to comfort his one-year-old daughter. He’d never been to Stars Hollow before, though he’d seen the pictures in the travel magazines he’d torn through during the last year. He’d dreamed of leaving the Gilmores, planned his escape in the loosest sense of the word. He’d had to hide the magazines and brochures, of course. Richard never even looked at him anymore, not really, but Emily would have found them and had all sorts of questions: questions Lorel either didn’t have answers for or didn’t _want_ to answer.

But _finally_ , after a year of trying to find something, _anything_ , to get him out of Hartford, he’d done it. He’d officially dropped out of school, packed up his and Rory’s things, loaded up his car, left a note for the Gilmores, and taken off without looking back. There was no place for him with his parents—they’d made that perfectly clear even before Rory, and _definitely_ clear after her birth—and no place for him with Christine—she would be graduating soon, and then she was leaving Connecticut. There was _nothing_ in Hartford for Lorel Gilmore. 

But there was an inn in Stars Hollow that was hiring.

**Author's Note:**

> this rule!63 world has lorelai and her romantic fellows genderbent, and it's separate from my RULE!63 LITERATI series. this is the first installment, and it's essentially the prequel to the "gilmore girls" original series. let me know what ya'll think!


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